Einstein:"If you can't explain it simply you don't understand it well enough"
For most people who are beginners in IT, learning new technology seems a bit scary.
My goal is making the problem simple and giving the step-by-step solutions. So at CBT4All, we cover Academic and Professional issues and try to handle them step-by-step in the simplest way.
I'm not claiming that these pages are complete or perfect, but I try to do my best just for helping. Please corporate with me to improve it...

Proxy, Database, GUI, Media server can be installed on one machine, or more

Complete Architecture

Without Proxy

Simple (Our approach)

We have installed all components in one machine, so Simple architecture is our approach

We have installed all components (Proxy, Database, GUI, Media server) on one machine

SNMP
SNMP is a standard protocol for monitoring devices
Uses MIB and OID to monitor CPU, RAM, Bandwidth, etc. SNMP Needs to be installed or be activated on devices. After that,
Zabbix send request, devices send responds
This protocol is suitable for Network devices (Routers, Switches, etc) and Servers

Zabbix Agent
Zabbix Agent is a software which is developed by Zabbix. It
Need to be installed on machines
and you can download it for different OS here
Zabbix Agent sends monitoring data to Zabbix Server
and it uses default port TCP 10050 so it must be open on firewalls
Zabbix Agent is suitable for Servers

Main menus

Configuration: The most important part is Configuration. You can add network devices like Switches, Routers and Servers, here.

Monitoring: When you add Devices like Routers, Switches and Servers which are called Host, you can use Monitoring menu to see the results of monitoring. For example you can see the graphs here.

Reports: After a while, you may need to have a report about for example bandwidth usage. You can use this menu for creating reports.

Host: The device you want to monitor. Like Routers, Switches, Servers, etc. For example R1Host name: Enter a unique host name for your device (R1)Group: Select a group for your Host. A host must belong to at least one host group. I choose group TemplatesAgent interfaces/SNMP interfaces: Depends on your approach to monitor device by either SNMP, Zabbix Agent or both, choose the IP Address (I Use SNMP for R1)IP Address: 192.168.1.201, I recommend
to use IP address rather than DNS Name because if you use DNS Name: You have to have DNS Server which works properly.
More information: https://www.zabbix.com/documentation/2.4/manual/config/hosts/host

Items: The object of the Host which you want to monitor. For example: CPU, Memory, Interfaces, Bandwidth… At the moment, for just an example, I want to monitor CPU and Memory Load of R1Name: Define a name for a the Item you want to monitor
CPU Idle, CPU Usage – Memory Free, Memory UsageType: Means how you want to monitor your data?
Zabbix Agent, SNMP v2, SNMP v3, etc.Key: Choose an unique name for your Item.
It will use when you want to create a special Item, which is a combination of others Items. For example Item3=Item2+Item1, Item5=𝐼𝑡𝑒𝑚4/𝐼𝑡𝑒𝑚6 (Zabbix calls this special items, calculated items)
There are several condition for selecting Key (Unique name) for each Item. For more information: https://www.zabbix.com/documentation/2.4/manual/config/items/item/key

I recommend use similar things for Name and Key but you have to obey the conditions. For example, for CPU Usage, I choose CpuUsage and for CPU Idle I choose CPUIdle and so on.

interfaces.ifTable.ifEntry.ifInOctets.1
In this string, .In: Income traffic, speed 10/100, Octets: Number of Byte, 1: Interface 1
it means: The total number of Downloaded Bytes, including frame, in FastEthernet (10/100)
The OID for this string is: 1.3.6.1.2.1.2.2.1.10.1

interfaces.ifTable.ifEntry.ifOutOctets.1Out: Outgoing traffic in speed 10/100, Octets: Number of Byte, 1: Interface 1
It means the total number of Uploaded Bytes, including frame, in FastEthernet (10/100).
The OID for this string is: 1.3.6.1.2.1.2.2.1.16.1

Graph:
In the Graph part, you can create a new Graph for each items you have created before.
Name: Must be unique
Width: Width in pixels
Height: Height in pixels
Graph type:
Normal, Stacked, Pie, Exploded
Items: The items you want to see in the graph
Examples: R1 CPU Load, R1 Memory Load, R1 Interface load

for more information: https://www.zabbix.com/documentation/2.4/manual/config/visualisation/graphs/custom

Trigger
Trigger means: Please watch the data which are storing and evaluate it by something which I tell you.
Example, If the average of Used Bandwidth for 5 seconds is not more than 3 Mbps the result of Trigger is OK and if it is equal to or more than 3Mbps, the result is PROBLEM

If you don’t receive the email from Ubuntu Server, you have a problem with your SMTP Server. You should troubleshoot and find the solution. I cannot help you about this issue but you can start from the command tail /var/log/mail.log for troubleshooting

By the way, I never check the email cbt4allemail@gmail.com! It is only for my lab.

Now we can monitor Items each device, one by one. But do all devices have limited Items? For example if we want to monitor a Switch with 48 ports, do we have to add all 48 interfaces one-by-one?
In next video I will show you how you can use the Templates to make monitoring easy!

26 comments:

Anonymous
said...

hi friend,

my zabbix server is in AWS i need how i can monitor remote sites using it

Hi, based on logs you sent me, you may have connectivity problem. "smtp.gmail.com[74.125.68.108]:587: Connection timed" means the server cannot connect gmail. Check the internet connection first, by ping and be sure DNS is working properly

Hi, Thank you for a great job. Can you make a video on how to set a Zabbix server to receive SNMP trap? and also shed some light on MIB and how to set up MIB as per item 1.5 on this documentation https://www.zabbix.org/wiki/Start_with_SNMP_traps_in_Zabbix

Hi,I am having an issue with my Zabbix Dashboard. I get the message at the bottom of the page "Zabbix server is not running: the information displayed may not be current." Also at the top it says Zabbix server is running and the value is No in red font?

@OwenHi, well if you followed my videos you would not get the error. But it seems you need to run the ZabbixServer manually. If this does not work, you need to check the logs to see why the Zabbix Server is not run

I am new in Zabbix ,my teammate that was configured zabbix has left now .My question is how can i remove Yahoo alert from zabbix .Actually Yahoo site is working ,but why it is sending such alert Yahoo is not working,let me know.

Hi Alizera,After following your instructions step by step, I have reached the using GNS3 to emulate, I have not worked with the GNS3 before, could you help me to configure the GNS3 in order to play exactly the same as the step in your video. Thank you in advance and hope to get you reply as soon as possible.

Hi Alizera,After following your instructions step by step, I have reached the using GNS3 to emulate, I have not worked with the GNS3 before, could you help me to configure the GNS3 in order to play exactly the same as the step in your video. Thank you in advance and hope to get you reply as soon as possible.

thank you for the useful information,I have a juniper srx340 device, I monitor it with snmpv2 ok and monitor the dc interface with temp discovery, CPU and memory I can not get. I tried OID and MIB but not exactly. Could you please guide with juniper equipment.Thank you.

Your content and understanding of Zabbix is great. However, your teaching style is very slow and a little broken. You take long abrupt pauses while explaining important concepts and switch windows which makes it difficult to understand what you are trying to say. If you could improve your teaching skills, then your videos will become so much better because you already have great content and knowledge.

Sorry for being overly critical but I just found your teaching style very irritating and hard to concentrate on. That doesn't mean I don't like your channel. Keep up the good work!